


Just Tryna Make it Back Home

by oneoneandone



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28411890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneoneandone/pseuds/oneoneandone
Summary: One red card, one bad tackle, and seven minutes left.Or, the game where Kelley has to step into goal.
Relationships: Kelley O'Hara/Hope Solo
Comments: 1
Kudos: 34





	Just Tryna Make it Back Home

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt**   
>  _Hope gets a red card during a game, Kelley has to fill in as goalie._

There’s seven minutes left in the game when Alyssa gets kicked in the head and has to be stretchered off the field. 

Alyssa, who’d come in in the fifty-third minute after Hope was shown a red card for a tackle the ref claimed was late. Allie, the unfortunate field player who’d been sent off to allow the backup gk into the game.

Seven minutes left to defend their one goal lead. Stoppage time after that. 

And Kelley, standing between the posts. 

—–

“Hey, medical, we need medical,” Becky shouted from the box, kneeling over Alyssa’s prone body. She held her fist up in the air, an immediate signal to the coaches and trainers on the side that there was a head injury on the field. 

Within minutes, there was a stretcher on the field, EMTs carefully assessing her teammate, preparing to immobilize her neck, roll her onto the backboard.

Kelley stood to the side, keeping an eye on her friend, as she took a long drink from one of the water being passed back and forth. 

This wasn’t good. 

Hope out and probably throwing a fit in the locker room, Alyssa out but hopefully not permanently injured, the team down to nine field players on the pitch and no more keepers on the bench. 

This was not good.

—–

Kelley focuses on the field, rocking back and forth on her heels, trying to remember everything Hope had ever told her about goalkeeping. All those early morning practice sessions, the late-evening meals, dinner and strategy talk. 

She’d been assigned as the backup to the backup because she had a little experience. A similar position on one of her youth national teams. 

But they’d never expected it to come to this, to actually need her to step up. 

—–

“Kelley,” Ali said from just over her shoulder, “Jill wants you.” 

The head coach was talking, hands far more animated than usual, with her staff as they approached. 

It’s not until they’re right behind her that Jill noticed that she and Ali had appeared.

“Okay, kid,” Jill said, putting her hands on Kelley’s shoulders, “we’re going to sub Ali in at right back and put you in goal, okay?” 

But her words didn’t register. Kelley was too busy trying to figure out why the trainers were lifting her jersey up and over her head. 

“Kelley,” Jill said again, crouching to look the shorter woman in the eye, “do you understand? We need you in goal. We trained for this, you have the best mentor, the best keeper coach in the world. You can do this.”

And it hit Kelley then, as the black jersey was pulled down over her head and arms. 

It smelled of Hope, she realized. Hope’s sweat and Hope’s deodorant and the lavender oil Hope massaged into her skin before every game. 

“You need me to play keeper,” she said and Jill looked relieved, turning to exchange a thankful glance with the trainer. 

“Yes,” Jill answered, a little slower this time, “we’ve got one sub left. You’re going in goal, Ali’s coming in at right back, got it? Think you can do this?”

Kelley let the trainers slip a pair of gloves onto her hands, securing the strong velcro tabs tightly around her wrists. 

“Absolutely,” she answered, “let’s go.”

—–

She’s got Ali on her right and Kling on her left, with Becky and Julie anchoring the defense in the center. 

The ref shows the Nigerian player a red once Alyssa’s safely off the field and on her way to medical, and then it’s ten on ten. 

And almost immediately, she makes a mistake. 

The Nigerians are pressing high, excited at the opportunity before them. The US team vulnerable, an inexperienced field player attempting to play goal. 

Kelley’s first touch is a bumbled pass to Becky, a Nigerian player streaking out to intercept grabs it and moves toward the goal. And for a moment, Kelley is frozen, unable to move. Terrified as the forward gets closer and closer, until Becky comes up from the side and cleanly tackles the ball away. 

“Hey,” the captain says, coming up to her, “take a breath. It’s going to be okay. Don’t worry about directing the line, I’ll take care of that. You just concentrate on what Hope taught you, and everything will be okay. Got it?”

Kelley runs a hand down her stomach, Hope’s number there, Hope’s name across her shoulders, and breathes in, letting the scent soothe her, ease her anxiety. 

“Got it,” she says, and jogs back toward the box. 

—–

Focus. 

Eyes on the ball. 

Body language. 

Confidence.

Kelley spent the short walk toward the box reviewing what Hope had taught her, those four commandments the taller woman believed were the key to her position. 

Focus. 

Eyes on the ball.

Body language.

Confidence.

She pushed up the sleeves of the jersey again and looked up to the sky as she approached the goal. She could do this. She could do this. She could do this. 

Hope had told her so a thousand times. 

She could do this. 

Focus. 

Eyes on the ball. 

Body language. 

Confidence.

—–

A minute left of stoppage time, and she makes a save. 

The drive for the goal starts all the way on the other half of the field, with the Nigerian holding mid heading down a pass meant for Christen and quickly moving it on to the waiting striker near the center line. 

But Kelley’s ready. She sees her opponent’s intent even before her line does, and never lets that ball out of her sight, despite the fancy footwork of the other player. Fast, with fresh legs, the forward takes a shot just a second before the line reaches her. 

But Kelley’s already got the ball wrapped up in her arms, a perfect line-drive strike toward goal. 

She can hear her bench, her teammates, erupt with applause. The commentator ecstatic as he announces to the crowd, up on their feet: Defender Kelley O’Hara has made the save in goal with less than a minute to go!

She drowns them out, head still in the game, and punts the ball down the field, to Mallory, waiting for it near the center. 

And then the whistle blows, and this crazy, fucked-up game is over. 

Her teammates surround her on the pitch, sliding on their knees to hug her, to rustle her hair, to scream at her with joy, and Kelley disappears into the moment. 

She’s done it, kept them at 1-0, closed out the game for them. Against all odds, perhaps. 

Against all her expectations, certainly. 

—–

The post-game business is taken care of as usual–hand shakes and cool downs, pictures with fans. 

And though it’s thrilling, this wave of excitement, of pride, that’s cutting through her, Kelley knows she won’t remember it in the years to come. 

What she’ll remember, though, is hugging Hope’s jersey to her body, chilled as the sweat dries on her skin, as the wind picks up and brings a cold breeze into the stadium. 

She’ll remember how standing there, in the middle of the box, she’d been surrounded by Hope’s scent, inspired by it. Protected, even. Because nothing makes her feel safer than Hope. 

But most of all, it’ll be the sight of Hope, standing there just at the entrance to the locker room corridor, still in her cleats and her socks, her shorts. A tight, fitted compression shirt–the one she wears under her jersey–on top. 

It takes Kelley a while to make her way over there, people stopping her, asking for photos, for autographs. But eventually she makes it. Eventually she’s standing right in front of her teammate. 

Her kind-of secret girlfriend. 

The woman she’s pretty sure she loves.

—–

“You did great,” Hope tells her with a careful smile before pulling her into a fierce hug. “You did just great.”

Tomorrow they’ll pack up their bags and fly to the next city, the next match. Ashlyn will be moved up, put onto the active roster so she can start in place of Hope for the next game, and Kelley will be back in her own kit in her own spot on the field. 

But tonight, tonight she’s going to celebrate this day. Skip dinner with the team and play footsy with Hope under the table as they eat their meal by candle light. Flirt with the most beautiful woman in the world and have a glass of champagne and climb into bed with Hope wearing a black jersey that smells of lavender and Hope and love. 

“You were with me the whole time,” Kelley whispers in Hope’s ear, eager to get to the locker room, to get changed, to let the evening begin. “How could I fail when I had you?”


End file.
